This is the moment a 16-year-old girl in her pyjamas bursts into tears as she is pulled from under tonnes of rubble in the aftermath of the Turkish earthquake.
The petrified youngster had been trapped under a concrete wall from a collapsed building in Hatay Province on Tuesday, 7th February.
In the rescue footage, a firefighter can be seen reaching down into a hole he’s hammered through the concrete after hearing her cries for help.
The girl – identified as Sevval Deniz – is pulled through the hole and seems astonished that she is safe at last.
She immediately bursts into tears and hugs the firefighters who had rescued her from the wreckage.
The footage was shared by Turkey’s Kutahya Municipality Fire Department, who performed the rescue.
The department said in a statement obtained by Newsflash: “Our Kutahya Municipality Fire Department teams, who moved to the earthquake area without losing time after the earthquakes that occurred in the Pazarcik District of Kahramanmaras and caused destruction in many provinces, became partners in a miraculous salvation in Hatay.
“In Hatay, where there was a great destruction after severe earthquakes, our Kutahya Municipality Fire Department teams, working in the wreckage of a collapsed building, rescued 16-year-old Sevval alive after hours of effort in the region where they concentrated on the sound.
“Sevval, who burst into tears after being pulled out of the wreckage, was handed over to the medical teams by our firefighters who saved her and took her to the hospital.”
The 43-second-long video was viewed 11,000 times after it was shared on Twitter by the fire department around 9.23am this morning, 7th February.
The death toll from Monday’s devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria has soared past 5,100 (3,549 in Turkey, and at least 1,600 in Syria) and is expected to rise further, according to reports.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan declared a three-month-long state of emergency in 10 provinces after the two earthquakes, 7.8 and 7.5-magnitudes, devastated nearly 6,000 buildings in the country.
Meanwhile as rescue efforts with over 25,000 deployed search personnel continue, emergency workers in both affected countries claim they are completely overwhelmed.
Additional 70 countries had offered help in search and rescue operations.
Erdogan stated that the country plans to open up hotels in Antalya in order to shelter people impacted by the quakes.
